The creation of a banana district
In his interview which was published in Uganda’s Monitor dated February 9, 2004 Hon. Major General (rtd) Kahinda Otafire observed that “We [NRM] stood for national unity, for democracy, for equality and we were for justice for all. You find all the principles we fought for contained in our ten-point program”. Ugandans interpreted democracy to mean empowering them to participate directly or through their representatives in decisions that improve their lives.
The president’s spokesperson characterized President Museveni as a man of the people – a believer in true democracy – who is always in touch with ordinary people including at the lowest level. In practice two major things have happened: first, the ten-point program was dropped – and so were the principles contained in it – when the NRM government began collaboration with the IMF and the World Bank after signing an agreement in May 1987 and second, democracy has been practiced at gun point to force people and institutions to take decisions dictated by NRM leaders. In forcing some of these decisions, NRM leaders were facilitated by the donor community. For example, the idea of decentralization came largely from development partners who thought that people would be able to take decisions that improve the quality of their lives and that services would be brought closer to them.
The NRM government, intent on dividing and ruling Ugandans for ever, seized this decentralization opportunity and has divided the country into so many units resembling tribal clusters that have become economically unviable. Greedy people who want high positions in society that enable them to become rich quickly or want safe constituencies have hoodwinked poor and ignorant people that new districts would result in more money from the central government and people would be better represented in parliament. Where discussions have taken place at all, they were merely to rubber stamp decisions taken by NRM leadership and to give a semblance of democracy. In other cases there were no public debates.
Rukungiri district is an example where public consultations did not take place. When the former Rukungiri district was made up of Rubabo, Rujumbura and Kinkizi counties, it was an economically viable entity with a diversity of natural resources and human capital that would make a district stand on its own economically.
In the name of decentralization without giving people the chance to debate the short, medium and long term economic and social merits and demerits of splitting the district, parliament went a head and broke the district up into Rukungiri (Rubabo and Rujumbura) district and Kanungu district. The people in the new Rukungiri district soon realized that their economy depends largely on bananas. (Tourism, minerals, forests and major cash crops such as tea and coffee are in Kanungu district). Bananas are a vulnerable crop sensitive to weather changes, diseases and delayed actions. You get one hailstorm and you are out of food and business. The banana fruit is perishable. If a truck carrying them to market breaks down and is not repaired quickly, you lose the entire truck load because bananas ripen very quickly in Uganda’s tropical heat.
Rukungiri district lies in or is close to cattle movement corridors from neighboring countries and bovine diseases have become endemic necessitating cattle quarantines that constrain commercial activities or spending too much money on veterinary medicines that the industry has become more or less a liability. Besides, with poor roads and long distances from milk and meat consuming centers in Kampala, Entebbe and Jinja etc, Rukungiri far away from these consuming centers is at a disadvantage. Often milk is wasted for lack of cooling facilities or trucks. Therefore, Rukungiri district council and township do not have a tax base to generate adequate resources to meet administrative and development needs.
Economic hardship and political pressure to raise funds and accommodate political ambitions respectively forced NRM authorities to come up with the idea of upgrading Rukungiri Township into a municipality incorporating subsistence agricultural areas.
In discussions with one of the Town Council officials I learned that the municipality will help generate resources by charging land and other taxes and above all dividing rural areas into plots that will be sold to the rich and mobilize resources. Knowing that the peasants would not accept a municipality with such an agenda, the district council met in an emergency session and councilors were forced literally at gun point to pass a resolution recommending that Rukungiri town become a municipality. The decision was taken on a Friday and the following Monday it was presented to parliament not by the Minister of Local Government who has mandate to do so but by the Member of Parliament from Rukungiri Hon. Major General (rtd) Jim Muhwezi. Parliament approved it right away.
The manner in which the boundaries were drawn up (avoiding those areas nearest to the town center where the politically powerful reside and own property and land) extending into areas where people are virtually politically voiceless and belong virtually to one ethnic group that for long has suffered the indignity of domination and exploitation has raised many questions that some of them verge on ethnic cleansing – a process in which one ethnic group expels persons belonging to other ethnic groups from their homes, jobs and land.
After consultations I have written to the Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament with copies to the Prime Minister who is leader of government business, to the Uganda Ambassador to the United Nations in New York (where I work) who represents the President and to the Leader of the Opposition. In the three communications I have protested that the administrative and democratic procedures were violated and the decisions by Rukungiri district council and parliament should be nullified. I am still waiting for the Speaker’s response.